The Memphis, Tenn. shipping giant wrote in a statement (emphasis our own):

Amazon.com, Inc. is not FedEx Corporation’s largest customer. The percentage of total FedEx revenue attributable to Amazon.com represented less than 1.3 percent of total FedEx revenue for the 12-month period ended December 31, 2018.

It appears to be the first time FedEx has had to release a statement on one of its own customers and how much (or little) that customer claims the shipper’s bottom line.

Business Insider contacted FedEx to learn more about why it released this statement on Tuesday, who is FedEx’s largest customer, and what specific services FedEx provides Amazon.

“While there has been significant media interest in what Amazon is doing to expand their in-source delivery capability, this should not be confused as competition with FedEx,” a FedEx spokesperson told Business Insider. “The global infrastructure, the technology, the capabilities and the knowledge needed to compete in our business is quite extraordinary, and we have built that up over 40-plus years.”

Amazon is building its own capacity – for itself, and maybe others too

Amazon is quickly building its own logistics capacity, which means it won’t have to rely on FedEx and UPS, the world’s top package shippers, to move its deliveries every year.

Amazon is developing its own logistics capacity in air, sea, and land. Morgan Stanley analysts said that Amazon is on track to have 100 planes by 2025. The mega-retailer already has 40 planes in a cargo air fleet that was established in only 2015.

And in the past year, Amazon shipped nearly 4.7 million containers of goods from China to the US in ocean freighters.

Signs are also showing that Amazon is interested in shipping for others and not just developing an in-house delivery program.

UPS and FedEx leaders say it’s not a problem

Meanwhile, the leadership at both FedEx and UPS have long emphasized that they see Amazon as nothing more than a customer.

“I think the prospects that this company is going to be ‘disrupted,’ which just occurs over and over again, to quote a previous statement, is fantastical,” FedEx CEO Fred Smith said to investors on a call in December. “So I’ll leave it at that.”

“They’re a good customer of ours,” UPS CEO David Abney recently said of Amazon. “We work closely together.”